Browse Tag: chris evans

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame (2019): Anthony & Joe Russo

One year after the incredible, world-breaking, superhero-killing Infinity War, The Russo brothers return with the climactic Avengers: Endgame.

All these heroes have real names and hero names, and I’m going to switch between them often with little rhyme or reason. You’ve been warned.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: The living superheroes figure out how to move on from Thanos’s devastating, life-halving Snap, then they figure out how to undo it so they don’t have to move on.

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Avengers: Infinity War


Anthony & Joe Russo

Avengers: Infinity War and its follow up Endgame represented the largest undertaking in Hollywood history. How to wrap up stories and character arcs from a decade’s worth of movies?

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: Marvel’s heroes band together to stop Thanos, a gigantic purple being determined to gather six Infinity Stones and use them to wipe out half of life with a snap of his fingers.

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RECAP: Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017): Jon Watts

“Homecoming.” Do you get it? The events of Spider-Man: Homecoming occur around homecoming dance at Midtown School of Science and Technology, but the producers were being cheeky. Wink wink nudge nudge. This Spider-Man is the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Get it? That’s the homecoming. So clever.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: Spider-Man struggles to be a normal teenager and a crime-fighting hero, but this time it’s different because Iron Man shows up.  Continue Reading

RECAP: Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War (2016): Anthony and Joe Russo

The 2014 sequel titled Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a taut political thriller that dealt with espionage and double agents. Were it not for a guy in a blue spandex suit, we might have forgotten we were watching a Marvel movie.

For Cap’s third solo turn, Marvel decided to cast Robert Downey, Jr. on the same level. The studio used a major plot line from the comics and maxed out the emotional stakes for the world’s greatest team of heroes (Justice League be damned).

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: Captain America refuses to sign away his do-gooding powers and suffers the consequences.  Continue Reading

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW: Captain America: Civil War

There’s a moment in Captain America: Civil War when a bad guy narrates his evil plan. Yes, you’re right, every bad guy in cinema history has narrated his evil plan.

While he narrates, Captain America fights Iron Man. Their fight is titanic, nearly in the mythic sense of that word, because these two men are possibly metahumans.

Chris Evans‘s third solo headlining turn as the eponymous captain is his, and Marvel’s, most ambitious project to date.

2012’s The Avengers was a culmination of sorts, a party picture with each Avenger cracking wise when not cracking alien skulls. Their enemies were literally out of this world. It was an easy film to get behind, a movie made for the rah-rah crowd.

Civil War shatters all that good will. True, this is the second movie of 2016 to feature two Hall of Fame comic book heroes fighting each other. Unlike Batman v SupermanCivil War won’t allow the movie’s other plots to drown it out. The central superhero conflict IS the noise.

Cap and friends begin the movie united, fighting more baddies with the tested Avengers-style teamwork. Old demons are haunting them. Villains of movies past creep back, forcing the Avengers to choose sides–sign away their crime-fighting rights or not.

Central to the plot is, again, the brainwashed Bucky Barnes, childhood friend of Steve Rogers. A recycled plot disappointed this reviewer in Star Wars–The Force Awakens, but Civil War offers more than enough different side dishes to complement last night’s leftovers.

Robert Downey, Jr. earned $50,000,000 to bring Tony Stark to screen and nearly make this movie a dual headliner. Downey earns every dime with his Stark attitude and barely veiled despondency and anger about the bodies Iron Man and the other Avengers keep leaving in his wake.

Evans, time and again, nails Captain America. Always the stalwart of, not democracy, but “what’s right,” Steve Rogers takes the American ethos of individual choice to its logical extreme–answering to no one. Evans plays Cap as a man certain of his rightness and willing to accept the price of that certainty.

Civil War could be called Avengers Lite. Excepting Thor and Hulk, the gang’s all back, and two new guys replace those AWOL Avengers. Spider-Man, played by actual teenager Tom Holland, oozes with youthful glee, characteristics the movie, stuffed full of heavy theme, craves.

Spidey earns a long debut scene. Luckily, with five standalone movies behind him, the public needs little introduction to the character. It’s enough for the movie to say “Hey, here’s a new Spider-Man.”

Earlier the audience meets Chadwick Bozeman as T’Challa, a prince of the African fake-nation of Wakanda. When that nation suffers from a terrorist attack, T’Challa suits up in his alter-ego Black Panther, a terrific fighter who wears a suit made of vibranium (same as Captain America’s shield), crosses paths with some of the Accord-signing Avengers.

Throughout Civil War Panther’s motives remain unclear, but his martial skills are shown often. And that vibranium suit.

All this adds up to the longest run time in Marvel history. It’s worth it. The fight scenes and effects are stellar, possibly Marvel’s best, and the emotional stakes have never been higher for these heroes. Civil War is Marvel’s The Dark Knight moment.

Exploder viewing guide: FIRST RUN WATCH

RECAP: Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): Joe Johnston

No one had ever avenged before Steve Rogers stepped into a Vita Ray chamber and became Captain America. Perhaps I should say that no had ever Avenged, capital A, before.

Long after the world learned who Iron Man was, Marvel introduced us to Captain America, and man red, white, and blue enough to make Norman Rockwell swoon, a guy as wholesome as General Mills adult cereals, not a do-gooder, but a do-bester.

What better opponents to do-besters than the Nazis? When you want a heroic character, make them stand against National Socialism and the hero comes up aces every time.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: A scrawny, scrappy kid from Brooklyn transforms into Captain America, the only man strong enough to defeat Hydra, a sinister Nazi science organization, and its leader, Red Skull. Continue Reading

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015): Joss Whedon

In 2015, the Avengers come back bigger, angrier, and avengier. But this sequel has a problem. In a Hollywood where everything has to be bigger and better and more of more, how can this sequel top the third highest-grossing movie in history, a film that Marvel built to for four years with five films? Whedon and crew give it the old college try.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: The Avengers assemble a second time to defeat an alien, and kinky, intelligence.

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